Hi everyone! I had shared this in the r/OCD subreddit but received few responses, I'm hoping to hear from some more people in this community I apologize if this is a lot to read.
I have been seeing a therapist for a few months now, and recently she had mentioned that I show signs of OCD and recommended we begin ERP in the near future (she did not diagnose me). I did not go into therapy seeking any diagnosis, but if there were to be one I would have always said GAD. My therapist is wonderful, I trust her and I believe that she is not just throwing around terms. With that said, I know very very little about OCD. I have been researching the past few days about key differences between GAD and OCD, because I have always been labeled as a "worry wart" "hypochondriac" and "high strung" by my family and friends, but I am not sure if I fall into one, both, or neither diagnosis.
My therapist suggested I begin taking note of certain repetative thoughts or negative thoughts in general, which I have been doing. It has made me feel a bit anxious and pretty sad, because I am realizing that there are many things that I am very afraid of. I always assumed I grew out of being a "worry wart" but it turns out that my fears are just less unrealistic compared to when I was a child. I have been feeling confused now, which my therapist said would be expected because I have had these feelings for as long as I can remember (ages 4 to now, age 23).
I am not seeking a diagnosis on this forum, just looking to hear if others have related to how I feel.
I will share just a few 'worries,' and maybe someone can relate?
- Fearing that I let my cats out of the apartment, or let them get into the dishwasher, or did something to cause the house to burn down. Fearing that I will accidentally kill them by being reckless. I do check to make sure the cats are safe.
- I get scared that my partner will pass away in a car accident if i do not go with them, but then I get nervous that by being unable to stop visualizing this scenario, I will manifest it into reality.
- I get nervous that I look stupid when I walk or talk, so I try to fix my posture, movement, etc. I get nervous that people around me are noticing how much effort I am putting into how I appear.
- I do repeat phrases or words in my head, mainly the word 'erase' and the phrase 'It is alright.'
- Lastly, I do pick at the skin around my nails, and I used to pull my hair out if there were split ends or little knots in an individual strand. I do not pull my hair out as often anymore, but I do spend a good portion of each day biting or picking at the skin around my nails. I have done this for over a decade.
I have never had violent or taboo intrusive thoughts, and even if I ever do receive an OCD diagnosis, these symptoms are not debilitating for me. I was just wondering if anyone else relates to this, what your journey/experience with OCD and ERP are, or GAD.
Thanks so much!
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nartington
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Hi Nartington! I have been diagnosed with OCD severe enough that is causes GAD so it is possible to have both. I have been struggling with this for 44 years now and have undergone numerous treatments including a complete cingulotomy. I have repetitive thoughts that automatically invade my mind. It is a real struggle. I’m sorry you have these thoughts and feelings because I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. As a teen I would turn light switches off and on in a sequence of fours until the anxiety subsided.
Thank you for the response Downinil, I really appreciate it I had to look up what a cingulotomy was, and wow, I am so sorry that you have had to go to more invasive and extreme measures. I hope that you have been given some relief at the very least.
Side note, I like the dolphins in your profile picture, super cute!
I am not a therapist but I have read a great deal about OCD, and I have had it for at least 40 years. So there's that!
It's my understanding that most humans have intrusive thoughts -- excessive or irrational fears, violent images, magical thinking, etc. The majority of people recognize these for what they are (meaningless byproducts of the brain's processes) and go on with life. Unfortunately some of us are bothered tremendously by these thoughts and we find them almost impossible to ignore. They make us anxious to the point that we do compulsions (checking that there are no cats in the dishwasher, repeating words/phrases, paying unnecessary attention to how others perceive us, etc) to get relief from the anxiety.
Usually the compulsions only make the obsessions stronger, because by doing them we tell our brains that we think the obsessions are important enough to warrant our attention. This starts a feedback loop of worsening obsessions and compulsions that can interfere with the sufferer's life to various degrees. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) can help one determine whether one's obsessions and compulsions rise to the level of "disorder."
OCD can be complex and individual experiences don't always fit into neat models. For example, I often have unwanted intrusive thoughts that are violent or taboo, but I don't obsess over them and I don't do compulsions to attempt to neutralize them. I am like a "normal" person where they are concerned because I can easily recognize them as ridiculous and not a reflection of who I am. However if I get an intrusive thought about accidentally burning the house down through some convoluted scenario, or negligently spreading disease by some highly unlikely means, I can obsess about it for hours or days, either doing physical compulsions to try to eliminate the "threat" or ruminating constantly about whether the "threat" is likely to occur.
Actually I do a lot fewer compulsions these days, thanks largely to ERP. Working with a therapist and working to understand OCD have helped tremendously. OCD can be very fluid and the content and strength of obsessions often change over time. If your symptoms are (or become) disruptive they can be managed with the help of a good OCD therapist and SSRI medications.
Thank you so so much! I really appreciate you taking the time to send such an informative message and to share about some of your dealings with OCD. I am glad to hear that ERP has been such a positive in your life! Wishing you the very best
Thank you for sharing. I have a question for you. My son is 17 and going through the intrusive thoughts and he is miserable. He has used ERP and it has worked for other OCD types he has but he struggles to use ERP for the intrusive thoughts.
You mentioned ERP has helped you with yours so I am wondering how you use ERP for this particular type of OCD.
We had a therapist tell him to picture putting the unwanted thought into a trash can and them forcing an opposite thought into his head. Do you have any other advice?
Some of them get a little technical, but some (especially those under the section "Pure O and Compulsive Rumination") might be helpful to your son.
Essentially I had to realize that I was dealing with two different things: the initial intrusive thoughts that I couldn't control, and the subsequent ruminating about the intrusive thoughts, which I could control. It can be a subtle distinction and I think a lot of us with OCD and even a lot of therapists don't distinguish them enough. This article explains it pretty well:
Obviously this doesn't mean that your son is just generating the problem on his own. He can't stop the initial intrusive thoughts (and shouldn't try), and (because he has OCD) it feels very wrong to not address them, engage with them, and try to come to some sort of closure about them. But all those actions only give attention to the thoughts and increase their frequency and power.
Conversely, NOT addressing or engaging with the thoughts makes them weaker and less frequent. A lot of my recovery effort goes into maintaining this attitude of "nonengagement" and not getting tricked into taking the intrusive thoughts seriously. Different people do this differently, but for me it always helps to ask myself "Would a non-OCD person spend time thinking about this?" If the honest answer is 'no,' then I know I need to avoid engaging with the thought, even if it keeps recurring every few seconds at first.
This can all be a little difficult to explain, but I hope it helps!
I really appreciate this. My son seems to suffer from exactly what you are dealing with also. I think he is old enough to go over the articles together. When he was younger it was such a nightmare for me as his mother. It's a difficult concept to explain to a child. Thank you for your help!
Hi, I've been dealing with ocd for quite a bit now, I'm nearly in my 20s and I've had fairly similar thoughts to what you have. Since around 2020 I wasn't entirely bothered by my intrusive thoughts as I knew I didn't think them, but ever since I had my false memory experience I started worrying about them more, anxiety does that to you, trust me. I've since gotten better with them as I still remember it's just my ocd trying to get under my skin but I'm still met with thoughts like "what if I accidentally locked my cat downstairs and he starves overnight" it does get me in the first few seconds but then I remember I always leave the door wide open so he can roam about at night. Gets easy after some time and reactions do vary amongst a lot of people, for example I think I was more unbothered about my thoughts than other people were about theirs. You just get used to it overtime and I found responding to them became easier by just shrugging them off as they were never my true thoughts
Both OCD and GAD can co-occur at the same time. That's what docs call comorbidities. When untreated OCD was peaking for me back in my early 20s, I would definitely have qualified for GAD and probably some other anxiety related disorders as my anxiety was through the roof like 90% of the time. I had dropped out of university and got addicted to alcohol at that time, as I tried to deal with it by myself mostly unsuccessfully. Treatments for anxiety related disorders are often based on CBT, and ERP is just another variation of it specifically tilted towards OCD treatment. Your therapist should be able to assess your symptomatology and draw a treatment plan. If it is OCD, and she is not specialised in it, my strong advice is get to see a trained OCD therapist, as OCD has many quirks that general psychotherapists are usually unaware of. It would save your money and time.
Thank you so much for the response! I will see if she specializes in it - she did mention that she worked for a long while in an inpatient center for children with OCD.
I hope that you are doing better now. Wishing you the best
I am, thanks. ERP therapy was a big game changer for me. I did ERP therapy for 2-3 months, and moderate OCD (22.5 Y-BOCS) went to sub-clynical. It's stayed like that up to this day, and I apply ERP tools I learned in the therapy daily. Meditation is another very useful tool for me as well, but to meditate first anxiety levels have to go down.
I’m not a therapist, but from my experience I think I can differentiate between anxiety alone and OCD.
Anxiety: I worry, for instance, about how I will perform or have performed in a social activity. I can do other things, but the nervousness increases or decreases depending upon how close the anxiety-producing event is.
OCD: The possibility of something bad happening is so disturbing that I have an extreme difficulty to focus on anything else and an overpowering urge to take measures to avert it. Doing anything that may avert the feared outcome (pondering, ritualizing, reassurance seeking, cleaning, checking, etc.) feels good at first, but the discomfort eventually returns and the cycle repeats itself indefinitely. I don’t think that GAD gives you the feeling to be caught in a loop or the feeling “I won’t rest until I find the relief I’m looking for”.
Like other people say, you may have a little bit of both. You worry about your appearance in public (anxiety), and you fear the inability to stop visualizing the scenario of an accident will make it happen (magical thinking, which is often part of OCD). Same thing with picking skin around your nails. It may be a sign of simple nervousness or, in its severe form, a symptom of body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), which share symptoms with OCD.
Thank you for sharing and for the additional information! I grew up in a very "we don't talk about that" household, so I am learning a lot about my behaviors in a short period of time. Hearing that others go through similar things is, selfishly, a relief. I hope that you are doing well and thanks again!
I've had OCD (undiagnosed) since around 5 years old, but got diagnosed only around a year or two ago. I have a good assortment of intrusive thoughts, mainly s3xual and abusive, but I have bits of contamination and symmetry, depending on how my stress levels are.
-Random thoughts of "What if my cats die?" or "What if I get into a car accident?" with grapic imagery
-Thoughts of severely physically/s3xually assaulting others
-Thoughts that if I don't tap my foot at markers on the road (streetlights, cars, bushes, etc), I will cause the car to crash
-If I keep thinking about intrusive thoughts, people will know and they'll hate my forever
-If I don't apologize, they will hate me forever
-Repetitive thoughts telling myself to die
The symptoms don't have to be absolutely debilitating to be diagnosed. Technically, if it affects your life in a negative way (it does), you very well may be diagnosed.
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